ANNEX D: COST OF A PARLIAMENTARY INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE

Our preliminary estimate of the resources that might be required to adequately fund the proposed Parliamentary Intelligence Committee for a year is, accepting a precondition, approximately $3 million.

That amount is based on the budgets of the Interim Committee on National Security, and Canada’s existing security and intelligence review bodies.

Our estimate presupposes that certain capital and infrastructure costs of the proposed Parliamentary Intelligence Committee would be assumed by other parts of Parliament and/or the government. Those costs include but are not limited to: secure facilities for meetings and office space; secure systems for communications and the management of classified information; the provision of sufficient security-cleared operations staff to conduct transcription and simultaneous translation at meetings, handle technical issues, and produce reports. If the proposed Parliamentary Intelligence Committee had to assume these costs, and other similar ones, its budget would have to expand considerably.

Over and above these infrastructure costs, we estimate that the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee will require a budget of approximately $3 million annually. We predict that the two largest costs the proposed Parliamentary Intelligence Committee would incur are from its analytical staff, and travel.

The proposed Parliamentary Intelligence Committee will not be able to function without a professional, analytical staff. Considering the size and complexity of the proposed Parliamentary Intelligence Committee’s mandate — to scrutinize the activities of almost a dozen agencies and departments that expend over a billion dollars annually and employ thousands of people — it will require an appropriately large staff. It should be noted that the members will be unable to involve their existing staff in Parliamentary Intelligence Committee’s work because of security requirements. A number of staff will be required to aid committee members’ develop expertise in security and intelligence and manage the workload demanded by the committee.

Travel will also need to be a part of the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee’s work to help it strengthen its understanding of emerging issues, and to maintain relationships with Canada’s intelligence community and other scrutiny bodies around the world. All the other intelligence review bodies that the interim committee met with have found it necessary to travel on a regular basis to carry out their mandate and to harmonize their practices with those of other review bodies in allied countries. We expect the proposed Parliamentary Intelligence Committee will do the same. What travel the proposed Parliamentary Intelligence Committee might undertake in a given year is, of course, speculative at this point. However, it would be reasonable to build a travel plan with the same objectives as that provided for in the Security Intelligence Review Committee’s 2003-2004 Report on Plans and Priorities. These costs, we estimate, will account for approximately a third of the proposed committee’s operating budget.

Sufficient resources to allow effective parliamentary scrutiny of intelligence will be around $3 million per annum. We arrived at our estimate through a series of pro forma calculations which we have not included in our report because they entered into unnecessary detail. We would, however, be willing to discuss our calculations with you at a later date.